The aristocratic Marten family has dominated headlines in recent weeks after 35-year-old Constance Marten, her newborn baby and partner, a convicted rapist, became the subject of a “high risk” missing person investigation.
Napier Marten had urged his daughter Constance to take herself and the child to safety as soon as possible.
Appealing to his daughter in January, Mr Marten said: “I want you to understand that you are much much loved whatever the circumstances. We are deeply concerned for your and your baby’s welfare”.
Mark Gordon, 48, and Ms Marten were found in Brighton on Monday night, but a vast search for their baby is still taking place. The couple were initially arrested on suspicion of child neglect but have since been rearrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
The couple went missing on 5 January, when it is thought their baby was just one or two days old, abandoning their broken-down car on the M61 near Bolton. Most of their possessions were destroyed when the vehicle caught fire but they had a substantial amount of cash, allowing them to live off-grid, police said.
Mark Gordon, the partner of Ms Marten, was jailed in the late 1980s in Florida, US, after raping and assaulting a woman when he was aged 14. After serving a 20-year sentence he was deported back to the UK in 2010, it emerged on Wednesday.
Mr Marten, 63, previously told The Independent he had known about Gordon’s criminal conviction for some time and it was of “great concern”.
The couple were sighted in Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Essex and London before last being seen in the Essex port of Harwich, some 15 kilometres from where they were apprehended seven weeks later in Brighton.
Who is Napier Marten?
Napier Marten, a film and music producer, is the son of Mary Anna Marten, a British Museum trustee whose godmother was the late Queen Mother, and who used to own the Crichel estate in Dorset. His father, Toby Marten, a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, had close links to the royal family, attending the Brownies pack at Buckingham Palace alongside Princess Margaret in her youth.
A notable archaeologist, Ms Marten was awarded an OBE in 1980 and appointed High Sheriff of Dorset nine years later. She was also made a trustee of the British Museum and travelled widely in aid of her profession, making frequent trips to Iran and 30 visits to Russia.
The late couple and their family lived at the vast Crichel House – used as the backdrop for several period dramas, including Emma starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The ownership of the house, in the wake of the Second World War, became the centre of a notorious political scandal.
In what became known as the Crichel Down affair, part of the estate was requisitioned by the government in 1938 for bombing practice by the Royal Air Force, with a purchase price of just over £12,000.
After a promise in parliament from Winston Churchill that the land would be returned to its owners after the war broke, and the purchase price vastly inflated by the government, the couple challenged the government and a public inquiry was launched.
The Martens defeated the government, winning back their land and effectively forcing agriculture minister Sir Thomas Dugdale’s resignation over the scandal – which is still held up as a landmark case in ministerial accountability and landowners’ rights.
The late couple is survived by five daughters and one son, Napier Marten, who was a Page to Queen Elizabeth II. In 1996 he took a voyage of spiritual discovery in Australia, later returning to work as a tree surgeon near Crichel House.
In 2013 it was reported that the previously 5,000-acre estate would pass instead to his eldest son Maximillian when he turned 25 that year, after the death of Mary Anna in 2010. The estate was later bought by American billionaire Richard Chilton.
Speaking to The Independent on Tuesday, Mr Marten said: “It is an immense relief to know my beloved daughter Constance has been found, tempered by the very alarming news her baby has yet to be found.
“For whatever reasons she and her partner went on the run, the consequences of their actions have increased many fold. It would have been far better if they had handed themselves in earlier.”
A fortnight earlier, the father and music producer called for the police to investigate his daughter’s links with a Nigerian cult church following claims revealed by The Independent that she was “brainwashed” there.
“Following the latest revelation in The Independent about how Constance was influenced by a Nigerian cult leader and suffered severely as a result, I am compelled to say that this substantiates long-held suspicions [I have] had since she returned from Lagos,” Mr Marten said on 13 February.
“Constance’s time there at the hands of the so-called Rev TB Joshua was bizarre and damaging in the extreme. I am appalled that she should have been there for five, maybe six months when there were opportunities for her to have escaped.”
